The Amazing Frugal Christmas Savings Spectacular!

Look for the first-ever Get Rich Slowly contest at the end of this entry!

HOHOHO!

I had intended to post a series of articles on how to save money at Christmas, but they’ve taken longer to write than I expected. Now it’s a little late to leak them out one at a time. Instead, I’ve bunched the information together into a colossal tip-filled extravaganza! Here are some great ways to save money while celebrating the season. (These tips are great for Christmas, for Hannukah, for Kwanzaa, or for whatever feast you celebrate this time of year.)

Be Organized
Planning saves time and money. It’s best to budget for the holidays at the start of the year, and to acquire gifts year-round. Most of us don’t have the discipline to do that. (I’m the world’s greatest last-minute shopper.) But anyone can make a simple list to track a rudimentary budget:

Determine your total budget. Maybe you have $500 to spend on Christmas gifts. Maybe you have $50. Decide which figure is most appropriate for you and write it at the top of a piece of paper.

List each person with whom you plan to exchange gifts. Arrange these names in order of priority: family and close friends first, work associates last (or whatever is most appropriate for your circumstances). Jot down an approximate budget for each individual on the list. The total of the individual budgets should equal your overall holiday budget.

Brainstorm gift ideas for each person. Write each idea under the person’s name. After you’ve brainstormed ideas, calculate approximate costs for each gift. Write the cost next to the name of the gift.

Trim the list. It’s likely that your brainstormed list exceeds your planned budget, possibly by a large amount. Now it gets tough. Reduce your planned spending by finding new, less expensive items for people, or by crossing people from the list. (Do you really need to get gifts for your neighbors?)

Stick to the list. Once you’ve completed your list, exercise discipline by sticking to your plan. This is the most important step.

My wife keeps a gift spreadsheet. This allows her to keep an ongoing list of gift ideas for the important people in her life. It can be used year-round — for birthdays, holidays, and special occasions. It’s also convenient. Say that Uncle Bob mentions in February how he’s always wanted one of those clocks with hourly birdsong instead of chimes. Kris can make a note in her spreadsheet right away, and refer to it when it’s time to buy Christmas presents.

Agree to Terms
Gift-giving among adults can be awkward. If you spend too much on another person, they may feel uncomfortable. Many people welcome the idea of doing away with gift-giving completely. Some, like my family, establish specific rules.

We’ve made a tradition of the $5 gift exchange. We give bigger gifts to the kids and to my mother, but the rest of us exchange gifts that cost no more than $5. It’s become a game to find interesting, thoughtful gifts for just five bucks. (Or to find amusing, tacky gifts for the same amount.) The first year we did this, the gifts were kind of lame. But with time, we’ve become more creative. Once in an antique store, I stumbled upon an old photograph that I recognized as depicting some of my sister-in-law’s relatives, for example. This year, Kris and I found some awesome gifts at garage sales.

Some people practice a variation of this. They do a $100 holiday, where their entire budget for a particular group (family, circle of friends, etc.) is limited to $100, and that money is divided as needed.

Others agree to only give presents to the children in the group. This relieves the adults of the pressure to buy gifts for each other while still allowing the children to experience the magic of Christmas. (Of course it could be argued that this isn’t the sort of Christmas magic kids should be learning.)

The goal here is not to be cheap — it’s to give thoughtful presents without breaking the bank. (And, for me, to not participate in the mad rush of consumerism during the holiday season.)

One last important piece of advice: if your family (or circle of friends) agrees to gift-giving guidelines, don’t be the person who breaks them. People feel resentful when one person takes it upon herself to give more than the agreed terms. Stay within the rules and have fun.

Make it Fun
Fun is what it’s all about. Christmas shopping shouldn’t be a chore. Entertaining variations of the gift exchange include:

Secret Santa — If you have a group that’s keen on the idea, Secret Santa can be a fun and inexpensive way to participate in the holiday season on a minimal budget.

Gift themes — Choose a theme — travel, computers, food, whatever — and encourage everyone in the group to base their gifts around it.

Draw names — This is an excellent way to cut down costs while still participating in a gift exchange. Before my family switched to $5 gifts, we each drew another person’s name from a hat, and gave this person a nice gift.

White elephant — Rumor has it this is also known as yankee swap in some corners of the U.S. I love white elephant exchanges. They’re a great way to get rid of silly stuff you have lying around the house. (Of course, you end up bringing home more silly stuff, but at least it’s new silly stuff.)

On Monday night, we attended the annual white elephant exchange we hold with a group of close high school friends. Here I am (on the left) with the lovely statue I took home.

As you can see, my friend Ron (on the right) received a matching piece. Actually, we smuggled them both into the car while Kris wasn’t looking. I’ll set them up in the bushes around our property for my nephews to find during the summer.

We have another white elephant exchange this weekend.

Think Outside the Box
For most people, Christmas gifts mean shopping at the mall. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Many wonderful gifts aren’t tangible items purchased from a store. Here are a few examples:

Give the gift of experience. In October, the Gift Weblog wrote: “There’s nothing like giving someone the gift of experience, it is something they will always remember.” Sample gifts of experience: sky diving, scuba lessons, hot-air balloon rides, cooking school, lunch with a hero, etc.

Personal gift certificates also make great gifts. In essence, these are gifts of time. Give new parents a gift certificate for a night of baby-sitting so that they can enjoy a night on the town. Are you good with computers? Give your brother-in-law a gift certificate for free computer repairs.

For several years, my wife and I gave each other love coupons. Sounds sappy, I know. But it was nice to be able to come home at the end of the day and redeem a coupon for a dinner out, or for a back rub, or for an evening watching a favorite movie.

Our consumer culture has created a sort of mall-blindness. Most people forget to think of any other sort of Christmas present.

Do it Yourself
My favorite gifts are those that people have made themselves. Homemade gifts demonstrate caring, creativity, and passion. We are lucky to have many crafty friends. Every year, I’m delighted to see what they create for Christmas gifts. In the past, we’ve given or received:

A hand-assembled collection of gourmet salts, complete with written description of each.

Ginger snaps.

Art. (Do you dabble in photography? A framed print of your nephew is a great gift for your sister-in-law.)

Chocolate-dipped hazelnuts (from a family with a filbert orchard).

Home-made jams and jellies.

This year, Kris has drawn from her stock of pickled vegetables to create gifts for friends.

I crafted a homemade gift of my own: basil liqueur, brewed from vodka, sugar, and fresh basil from our garden. The stuff has been steeping for several months, and now is finally ready to share.

Surely you,too, have a talent or hobby that you can draw upon to create gifts for your friends.

Other Resources
If these ideas don’t give you enough to think about, check out some of the other articles I’ve been collecting from around the web:

I Will Teach You to Be Rich: Ramit has a section on the madness of the holidays in his new eBook. In fact, this section is available as a free download. Check it out.

If you know of another site that should be added to the list, please forward the URL.

Contest
That’s it. I’ve exhausted all the Christmas-related material I’d gathered for this year. The rest is up to you. What are your favorite ways to save money during the holidays?This weekend I will select my two favorite tips from the comments to this entry. Two winners will each receive a one-year subscription to Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine. (You’ll need to give me your mailing address in order to receive the magazine. I promise not to use it for nefarious purposes. This contest is open to international readers, though a lot of the advice isn’t going to be applicable to your situation.)

Frugality doesn’t take the joy out of Christmas. In many ways, it adds to it. It’s a great feeling to find a perfect gift for only five bucks. Besides, when I think back to Christmases past, it’s not the gifts I remember, but the time spent with friends and family.

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This isn’t a way that I save money, but its my favorite way my mom saves money during the holidays. She gives some people unbaked, made-from-scratch cookie kits.

Basically she gets most of the dry ingredients to her favorite cookie recipes together, along with a mason jar, a note card, and some ‘country’ style ribbons (she lives in the sticks). She then layers all the dry ingredients in the mason jar, screws on the lid and prints the recipe on the notecard in an old-fashiony looking font, and then ties it to the jar with the ribbon. The result is cool looking, because the ingredients are layered in the jar.

This saves huge amounts of money because you buy the dry ingredients in bulk (flour, sugar, chocolate chips, oatmeal, baking soda, peanutbutter chips, etc)and also saves time because you don’t have to cook anything, just assemble the parts.

She gives these to the people that you feel like you should give gifts to, but don’t want to spend alot on, like people from work, people she doesn’t have everyday contact with, etc. The people she gives this to LOVE this gift. Like I said, it looks really cool, it lasts a crazy long time, so you don’t have to eat the cookies right away, its extremely personal because you can put alot of thought into what kind of cookies that person might like, its highly traditional because the recipes were passed down from her grandmother from ‘the old country’, when you do make the cookies, you basically dump the contents of the jar into a mixing bowl and then add the wet ingredients (usually a couple eggs), and in the end you end up with an empty mason jar, which are just cool. And show me someone who doesn’t like cookies and I’ll show you a cold black shell of a human being.

Anyway, I don’t know where she got that idea, but for someone on a really tight budget, it takes care of the less important people freeing up alot of money to spend on people closer to the family.

Here’s a tip for older, extended families. My wife and I both grew up next door to aunts, uncles and cousins with whom we were really close. We always enjoyed buying them presents. When we moved away and our younger cousins entered their teenage years, it became difficult for us to find decent gifts for each them that fit our meager budget. So, last year, instead of buying individual gifts for each person in these extended families, we decided to pool our resources and put together gifts the whole family could enjoy together. One family got a bucket full of snacks and their own copy of a board game we knew they enjoyed playing together. Another received a popcorn bucket with some passes to the local movie theater. This year’s gifts will be similar: food and something fun the family can enjoy together.

One way I save money on gifts to myself is by maintaining amazon.com and iTunes wish lists. As I come across DVDs, books or music that I think I want throughout the year, I place it on the list. I find that when I review these lists every few months, many of the older items seem less interesting and I feel glad not to have spent my money on something of such fleeting value. Tastes change.

Lists also make shopping for others so much easier. When my mom asks me for a list, I can just refer her to amazon.com. (She is reluctant to shop online, however, so I point out that most of the items on my list are available at any music or bookstore.) My sister-in-law doesn’t talk much about herself, so we often struggle with a gift for her. Her newly created amazon.com list offers us whole new insights into her taste in music and literature. I just started a separate list for my toddler son with age-appropriate books, toys and movies.

One tip I particularly like is to give your “favorite things” as gifts. Find items you love and use everyday that you can share with others. I have many favorite things for under $20 or even $10. By giving favorite things, the focus is on sharing things you like rather than how much you spent.

This year’s “favorite thing” gift is a zyliss pizza cutter. It is the unbelievably most useful kitchen item in the world (sorry, I get a little excited about it)! We use it to cut up everything, not just pizza…and it costs less than $10. Do an Amazon search for “zyliss” and you’ll find it.

Aw, I was going to post the same as #2, as that’s what I’m going to try out this year. I’m one of those people that likes to give “perfect” gifts, but I don’t enjoy spending lots of time/money trying to find and acquire that kind of stuff for people who probably won’t care after New Year’s, if not sooner. Also, my kitchen is too small to do baking en masse, so I figured I could just make the mix and include the full recipe so they could make it again after the mix was gone. I was proud of coming up with the idea on my own, that’s for sure.

This year, I decided to make my own holiday cards. I suppose you could argue that it’s unnecessary to send cards at all, but it’s sort of nice and I only had a handful to send. I made up the design with a cute dingbat font on photoshop and printed it on a 3×5 index card (99 cents for a pack of 100). I pasted the index card to a folded piece of construction paper (had that lying around my room) and wrote a note inside. No special envelopes required either; I made them to fit inside a standard 3 and 5/8 x 6.5 inch envelope (cost me $1.89/100 at my college convenience store… but I’m sure can be found at most dollar stores). I didn’t need to use all hundred index cards or envelopes, so I plan to re-use this technique to make computer-printed thank you cards or birthday cards.

You’ve already mentioned what would have been my tip, but I’ll reiterate since it works quite well. I have a close-knit family, and once all of us younger kids (the grandkids) grew up, it became a little awkward exchanging gifts. A few years back we opted to do the drawing names from a hat and combined with a dollar limit (usually $20 to $25), so that everyone only had to worry about one gift for the extended family. (Do note: this doesn’t cover immediate family, as I still gift my mom/dad/bro separetly, so make sure to have everyone get someone not in the immediate family). We also write down a suggestion (or two or three) of what we want, so the other person has a direction.

It’s worked really well for us, among aunts/uncles/cousins. Now, to be sure, don’t get in the way of grandparents wanting to spoil their grandkids – all of the grandkids still receive a little extra something from them, and we’re all ok with that. This doesn’t have to be a hard-and-fast system – don’t make Christmas about rules!

My family draws names with a $20 limit (including shipping, as we’re very spread out), but we’re working on phasing that out for something *even better.*

We are now writing a chapter of our family history each year. We’ll pick a topic, and each family member will write about it. One person plays “editor,” collecting the stories, and presents them all together for Christmas. We’ve written about our favorite Christmas (seven differing perspectives on the same year), the house we grew up in, and this year we’re writing about how we met our spouse. Last year, my Mom sent out her first draft of her entire life history.

This gift costs nothing, unless you choose to make fancy copies or books. It does take a little time if you want to contribute quality. It will, however, carry a lasting value unmatched by any tangible gifts we’ve exchanged, or even experiential gifts!

Make gifts for your family. Last year I sewed up little stuffed critters (animals or plushes) for everyone in my immediate family out of fabric we had floating around. I also made some beanies. The process was rather time consuming (especially because I was figuring it out as I went along) but once I’d figured it out a bit the process was surprisingly easy.

I bought everyone something small-ish (a CD, a DVD, a book I think they’ll like, or some other random item I think they’d like) and then attached the plush I’d made for them. Some people (cousins) just got larger plushies.

My wife and I made little stuffed eggs for people for Easter which were very well received. We also made some random things for a Breast Cancer Walk fundraiser (a stuffed pink bunny, a pink pillow with ‘I [Heart] Boobies’ stitched into it, and a pink beanie).

The project is pretty cheap (especially if you use old sweaters that you have lying around that you don’t really want, or you hit up Good Will) though rather time consuming.

If you travel a decent amount for business or even for leisure, use the miles/points you accrued to give gifts. You can redeem them for magazines, gifts cards, certificates to restaurants, and obviously free airfare or hotel stays if you have more miles/points than you know what to do with.

If you really want to think out of the box, give people the gift of your time and enjoy the sharing of good food and good times, and forget about buying gifts for adults (children are another matter – by all means spoil them).

Almost always, each gathering ends up with too much food that the host is begging people to take. Bring your tupperware (or borrow from your host/family). Freeze evertyhing immediately so it won’t spoil. If you are prepared you can eat free for up to two weeks. The appreciation of the host is a bonus.

Also, I agree with the “favorite things” post. When we find a great gift we get it for everyone, this allows us to try and find the best price or at a minimum cuts way down on the amount of shopping time we have to spend.

Every year my twin sister and I have a tradition of making gifts together. It gives us a push to spend more time together during the holidays. I always feel closer to her after spending a few weeks making 20-30 gifts for friends and relatives!
This year we are making personalized mirrors with one word affirmations, like fabulous and gorgeous. We started by picking up a bunch of the smallish (8×8) mirrors from Ikea, I think they are $5-6 for a four pack. My sister is obsessed with fonts, so we had some fun searching for fonts that fit the word we are going to use and the receiver of the mirror. We printed out the words to make stencils that we could cut out on contact paper. We used some glass etching glaze, left over from a candle holder project a few years ago, to etch the words on the mirrors. We added some cheap rhinestones to glitz up the mirrors for the girls and added a masculine etched pattern for the boys. We finished them off by attaching ribbon and twine so that they could be hung easily. I really like that we are giving them a reason to smile at themselves everyday when they leave for work or school.

I read recently in the media that the average American family is going to spend $800 on Christmas, even if they don’t exactly “plan” to…so look how far ahead you all already are!

Bake something simple and include a certificate (made up on your computer) where you offer a full day to help with a nasty chore that you know the person is dreading–clean out a basement, declutter the spare room, etc.

1) This may sound simple, but set a budget and stick to it. AND most importantly, save money for Christmas throughout the year. I set aside $50 a month for Christmas. I should have $600 a year to cover everything for Christmas. We have not been able to save that money every month, so this year I have had $300.

2) Don’t spend a fortune on your kids. Yes you are their parents, BUT they don’t need you to spend $500 on each of them. They do not need that much stuff! I have spent around $40 on each of my 4 kids this year. This includes all santa things. We are just filling the stockings this year. They each have 2 gifts under the tree from us. They don’t need more than that. I look around my house at all the toys we already have and they don’t need more stuff to have to clean up at night or trip over during the day. Your child will still be happy with a 2-3 well chosen presents. It is not how much you spend but what you get.

keep your eyes open for great deals throughout the year as well. this is where saving money each month helps. At a garage sale in october my ds spotted a huge knex set – the roller coaster set for $15 – all pieces and instructions. We were on our way to Target, where I saw the same set for $50. He really wanted this set and $50 is too much for us to spend. So after lunch I went back to the garage sale and they had marked it down to $7. What a great deal! And my ds will be thrilled. You just never know what you will find and when. Be ready to buy the right thing throughout the year and it will really save you money.

This year I’m selling a bunch of unused stuff on eBay and directing that money towards gift purchases. I’m also planning to use CoinStar and to exchange my last 3 years of random change for an Amazon gift certificate (this way CoinStar doesn’t take 7% or whatever it is).

I also am going to hit up Thrift stores and Used Book stores (including online) to conserve both to the benefit of my checkbook and the planet.

If I can find some healthy recipes, I also plan to make my own mason jar dry component treat mixes (just add egg/oil/milk/water/etc).

Next year I plan to plant some of those Loofa (Loufa?) seeds and grow my own Loofa sponges to give to family members and friends.

Rather than exchanging gifts or having an expensive dinner and/or party, my friends and I get together for a “bad movie night” where we watch an ironically bad movie. Throughout the year, Ryan Reynolds movies work, but for the holiday season, a made-for-TV Christmas melodrama or terrible family movie (Jingle All the Way? Yesss) is usually of choice. We bring all the bad alcohol that has been leftover at parties throughout the year and would otherwise never be consumed (peach wine, anyone?). We bring leftovers from other parties, i.e. half bags of chips and half loaves of pumpkin bread not finished at office parties. The “white elephants” of food, drink, and entertainment, if you will. The overwhelming amount of badness somehow makes for good!

I like our gifts to be unique (and obviously within our budget limit). Recently one of our friend couple celebrated 1st Marriage anniversary. So as a gift we gave them picture frame (in shape of 1 ) along with their nice picture which we had in our collection.

Most of events where we are planning to give gifts are are always known to us: like some kids birthday or babyshower or exchange gifts.

For kids, we like to take electronics stuff usually from http://www.hobbytron.com whenever they come on clearance around upto $20 shipping included)

Last year we got some gifts for exchange game and they had some mail-in rebates so at the end it was free (No we didn’t have to cut UPC barcode)

Overall, my advice is do predictions about future gifts that you want to give. And then look for the deals online. There are very active forums like http://www.deal2buy.com or fatwallet.com which have helped us a lot.

I, too, had a different picture of you in my mind…. In other threads you talk about being overweight, but in the pic it’s not particularly evident.

Some things my family and I have done to save money:

1. On occasion, when my partner and I exchange cards at xmas, we’ll include in our cards a cut-out image or two of a really expensive gift that we *might* have liked to buy, but didn’t. For example, a couple years, he inserted a pic of a $175 bottle of scotch which I sampled (and loved!) at a tasting…. but I got a perfectly wonderful and less costly (~$25) bottle of a different kind of scotch instead. This year I’m putting in his card a matchbook from a very expensive restaurant in town, though our holiday dinner will actually be at a friend’s house. It’s our jesting way of reminding each other of the shopping insanity at this time of year, and it helps us appreciate what we do get for the little money we spend.

2. We’ve also given each other presents that have helped us make presents for other people, thereby saving money. A couple of years ago he gave me a madeleine pan, and now I make madeleines a couple times a year as presents for people.

3. Another money-saving tip is just to give people ordinary stuff that they use all of the time. When I was a kid, I developed a habit of buying my parents some groceries each xmas. It may be anticlimactic in a way to unwrap a 16-pack of soap or a big bag of russet potatoes, but part of the appeal is the “surprise” effect of anticipating and getting something so totally mundane that you wouldn’t have thought of it. And this is stuff that the recipient would have bought anyway–it’s turned from a boring shopping experience into a “grab-bag” effect.

My husband and I have the tradition of giving each other experiences for Christmas, rather than more stuff.

This doesn’t always end up being the cheapest route, but it does keep our house from being cluttered up with extraneous stuff. That has a value all its own. Or, when a material object is the result of the experience, that object then has a really vivid story or experience attached to it.

For instance, my husband had always wanted to try blowing glass. Well, an art glass studio opened up a few blocks from our house and last year at Christmastime they held workshops where you could blow your own glass ornament. I gifted him with two sequential half-hour workshops, at $25 apiece–once so he could “get the hang of it”, and the second so he could better use his new skills. (He’s that kinda guy.) Well, he came home with two beautiful ornaments he made himself, and he absolutely raved about how much fun he’d had.

Guess what he’s giving me for Christmas this year? The same thing. I can’t wait!!

The kicker: I saw essentially identical blown-glass ornaments at the local art gallery for about $20 apiece. For the $10 premium I fulfilled his longheld wish and gave him a really awesome memory. Now that’s a bargain!

I come from a fairly large family, and we found that as we got older, we needed to extend the Christmas holiday a little to make it easier for people to travel, shop, and do the two-family holiday thing (where are you going first this year?).

What we do now is celebrate Christmas day as a meal, with no gifts, no stockings, just a tree, good cheer, and good food. If you can’t make it on that day, no worries.

We exchange our gifts on the Epiphany (or Three Wise Guy’s day) in January. It extends the holiday cheer through several days, including the New Year’s Holiday, and allows for some excellent after-Christmas gift shopping. In addition, it keeps us focused on the meaning of the season, and removes (for a while) the pressure to shop with the throngs, find the perfect gift, and travel during the expensive holiday season.

We’ve also gone to a name draw and under 30 rule.

The name draw is for those over 30. Each person picks a name on Thanksgiving (in person or by proxy), and that’s who you’re purchasing a price capped gift for on Christmas.

Everyone under 30 gets a smaller gift, often $10 or less, unless a group pools their resources for a larger one.

It has worked for us for over a decade, and takes some getting used to by spouses and significant others. Once they see how it works, they are pleased that the members of our family aren’t worried about where they are spending Christmas day. Peace, harmony, and cheap gifts.

The best thing we ever did to save money at Christmas is to start in January. We have a Christmas budget. Every paycheck a certain amount goes into that budget bucket. When October/November comes around we have accumulated the amount we CAN spend. We divide the money up accordingly and we dont spend more than we have. This can be formalized by opening up a Holiday Savings Account at your local bank or credit union. Make monthly deposits into the account, and they will send you a check in October for the full amount.

We shop early for Christmas. We take our accumulated funds and begin purchasing our gifts in Oct/Nov, before Thanksgiving. This gives us time to actually THINK about the gifts. It also prevents most spur of the moment shopping. Once our budgeted money is gone, its gone, so we think carefully about the gifts we buy. With the exception of a couple of relatives we were completely done with Christmas shopping the first week of November. We have successfully avoided going into any mall or shopping center so far this Christmas season. This has allowed us to spend more time reflecting on the season than worrying about the pocketbook. This has been the most relaxed and pleasant Christmas time yet!

I am doing what number 2 suggested! My brothers both have large families and live away from me. Gifts for brothers & wives, plus 7 kids plus shipping is just too expensive. So they will each get dry cookie mixes, decorator bottles and cookie cutters. I’ve already told one SIL and she may be more excited then my nephews will be. LOL I am lucky in that my nephews love to make cookies and be in the kitchen helping.

The best thing I did this year was make a list and STICK to it. My brother and I also pitch in money toward our parents gifts – the parents get something they actually want and will use and none of us feel like we have spent too much money.

I recently did a post on some of my holiday gift-giving tricks, but I find that absolutely the most powerful one is batch crafting.

Lots of people are into the idea of saving money by making their own gifts, but few people really maximize the cost efficacy of this technique because they make tons of different kinds of gifts that require tons of different kinds of supplies. I prefer to do crafts that require the same basic supplies but still remain customizable to the recipient. Homemade baking mixes are good for this, because with big bags of ingredients you have the bases for several different kinds of baked goods–Aunt Julie can get oatmeal-raisin and Cousin Larry can get peanut-butter chip with a minimum of tweaking and few extra ingredients. My all-time favorite, though, is marble magnets, which require absolutely minimal supply (florist’s gems, silicon glue, a scissor or craft punch, old magazines), offer tons of opportunity for personalization (I do cartoon images for my boyfriend, the letters of their names for my little cousins, and flowers for a garden-crazy friend), look great packaged in tulle or an Altoids tin, and get much, much cheaper when you make them in bulk. Making 20 magnets costs about $30, but it doesn’t cost you any more to make 200, and only about $5 more for a new bag of florist’s gems to make 400. It’s all about working with the supplies you have without homogenizing your gifts.

Take 2 cups of hot chocolate mix (from costco), mix with 2 cups sugar. The go get some peppermint-flavored cream for your homemade coffee. Add 2 tablespoons to your morning cup, and youâ€™ve got yourself grande peppermint mochas for the winter months, and a sizable amount of extra cash per month (# of trips saved to startbucks/month times about $5)

For me, this is adding up to about $40 per month, and Iâ€™m a light starbucks patron. $40/month is equal to my savings of a programmable thermostat and my compact fluoresent bulbs. Overall, thatâ€™s $120/month saved, and I still have adequate light, heat and coffee.

Here are a couple of gift ideas that are inexpensive (just the cost of a picture frame + a little drawing or searching time). They’ve been received well when I’ve given them to friends, family and co-workers.

Idea #1 is a DIY-drawing gift, it’s better for those you are closer to (family, friends).

Draw a very simple black and white picture of a memory that you have of you and the person (e.g. me and my dad playing NES back in the day). This should be a very simple (think shel silverstein or toothpaste for dinner) drawing. Frame it and gift. The great thing about this (besides being cheap) is that you can give it multiple times to the same person. They will have a growing collection of “memory drawings” from you.

Idea #2 is a good gift for co-workers, bosses, professors, etc. (Though it can be used for close family and friends as well.) Simply search the internets/comic archives for a comic that will be particularly appropriate and funny to the giftee. Print out, frame, gift.

This is a great post! I highly agree with #27. Homogenizing your homemade gifts is key. When I first started making gifts, I found that I wasn’t saving any money by handcrafting them (but it’s the thought that counts, right?) Then I started making the same gift for everyone on my list, and it’s been a great cost-saving technique. Last year I made “Family Movie Night” gift baskets. I picked up free popcorn tubs somewhere, filled them with movie-size candy I had picked up cheap, some homemade chocolate almond popcorn, and a $5 Blockbuster gift card. I wrapped it up with some snazzy cellophane and homemade gift tags. This cost me about $7-$8 per family, and it’s something that everyone can enjoy.

This year I’m making homemade candles. My mom is a yard-saler, so I had her pick me up some vintage tea cups (for something like a quarter a piece). I went to Jo-Ann’s the weekend after Thanksgiving, used a 50% off any regular priced item and bought 4lbs of candle wax for $7. I also went back in with more coupons, and picked up some scents for a $1 a piece. Now I’m going to fill the tea cups with wax, possibly decorate them with some ribbons or beads and voila, an oh-so-chic candle for everyone on your list! The best thing is that since all the cups are mismatched, everyone gets a very individualized gift.

Also, one other suggestion for saving $$ on Christmas gifts. I recently discovered the wonderful world of cost-cutting through couponing. And since I love to bake, especially during the holidays, I’ve always dropped loads of money on baking supplies this time of year. This year, I am fully stocked on flour (10+ bags in my freezer!), chocolate chips, butter, and oil, all for FREE or profit. There are always baking sales at the local grocery stores around the holidays, so if you keep your eye out, and take advantage of any doubling or tripling coupons, you can often get things at greatly reduced prices or free! It’s amazing! Due to a recent baking promotion at Safeway, I have 40+ boxes of Betty Crocker cake mix, a bunch of frosting, 10+ bags of cookie mix, and some muffin mix, that I was PAID to take out of the store (I used the profit to buy other more expensive baking supplies, like whole wheat flour and nuts). I’ll be giving most of this to family members in need or local shelters, since I tend to bake mostly from scratch. My roommates think I’m crazy, but I’m just relieved I won’t have to spend gobs of money baking this year!

Oh, and I wanted to mention that canning your own gifts is a great idea (and much appreciated by the recipients!), but you want to be extremely careful to follow proper protocol when canning and prevent giving anyone the gift of botulism. I just gave a presentation on this highly deadly toxin, and it is definitely not something you want to mess with!

I have to be thrifty during the holidays. I am a full time student and I work full time. I have alot of credit card debt, and it seems like a couple late payments snuck up on me in the last month. That being said, here are my thrifty tips for the holidays.

-Christmas trees: Every year we drive up to ZigZag, OR (about 45 minutes) and pick up a $5 Christmas tree pass to cut one down ourselves. We spend the whole day up in the snow finding the perfect one. Hot soup out of a thermos is an awesome lunch. And we always offer to pick up trees for our neighbors, who give us gas money for the trouble. I end up coming out even.

-Ornaments and lights: They were all bought three years ago the week after Christmas at Target. Strands of any colored lights are $2 each. I replace at least one strand every year, but at $2, it’s easy to afford.

-Neighbors, coworkers, and friend gifts: Home baked cookies! Go with some thing easy, like spice cookies, and make dozens! I buy cheap tupperwares, cute tags (at the $1 store), and some pretty ribbon for bows. I worked it out last year, and it cost about $1 a person for half a dozen cookies. I always carry around a couple extra unlabeled ones just in case I get a present from someone I wasn’t expecting.

-Family gifts: Shop in advance! I make my list in October, and then I can buy one gift a week. That way it evens out and I don’t have to pay for everything at once. And usually I am totally done way early, which helps me avoid impulse buying with all the ads around at Christmas. I allow myself to impulse buy stocking stuffers at the dollar store like a week before Christmas with a set about of money, of course.

-Holiday festivities: I always keep a supply of cheap ($6.99) peppermint shnapps and hot cocoa mix ($1 store) for friends. During December I will offer it to people who come over. It is cheap and easy to make. I have a stack of Christmas movies that I will watch with anyone who will watch them with me.

-Christmas cards and Thank You cards: I buy packs of 16 at the Dollar store. They have some nice ones!

Buy spices, flour, and sugar in the bulk section of your grocery store! I figure out how much of every spice I will need, and go to the bulk foods section (WinCo here in Portland, OR) and buy just how much I will need.

Then I use all of it up and don’t have to store bottles of spices and huge bags of flour in my cupboards for a whole year.

I have done comparisons with bulk versus bottled, and it mostly comes out cheaper in the bulk section.

I’m all for making gifts. I enjoy creating a heck of a lot more than shopping. I made a good dent in my yarn stash last Christmas, making scarves, hats, and mittens. I don’t have as much time this year, but there are a few knitted items in the works. For friends, we always try to make something food-related. Sometimes it is candy or cookies, other times it is jam or some sort of preserve (made from homegrown fruits). For young families, I often make cookie-making kits–cookie cutters found on sale or at garage/estate sales, assorted decorations (also found on sale–this year $1 for a package of 6 different sprinkles at Target), and handmade recipe cards for different types of cookies and frostings. This year I found a few yards of oilcloth at a 70 percent discount and I’ve been making simple aprons for kids to go with kits. Each apron is running me less than a dollar and the kits in total run me no more than 5 or 6 dollars each, depending on the number of cookie cutters I have on hand.

New parents and family members are often so in love with young children that they spoil them crazy and heap presents on them. This creates a vicious cycle as the child compares this year’s haul with last year, and their swag with their peers. It also goes a long way to affirming a materialistic mindset in children which can be difficult to mitigate as they get older.

Focus your family on non-gift Christmas traditions: food, games, rituals (such as tree decorating), family get togethers and so on. Try and make gifts a less central element of the celebration. Your children will learn early on that Christmas is about families spending time with, not money on, each other.

This will have the added, priceless, benefits of a less expensive and stressful Christmas, and stronger family relations unmuddied by monetary concerns.

Wow, I am so glad to have found this blog. My husband and I just got married three months ago and, though we’ve lived together for four years now, we’re still in that awkward paycheck-to-paycheck phase with no savings. I’m really looking forward to implementing the great tips I’ve found here. We’ve got about $15,000 in debt from credit cards and my student loan, and we want to buy a house in a few years. Hopefully we can achieve our goals faster with some smart money management.

I love the Christmas ideas, too. I’m an artist, so I usually give small paintings, handmade ornaments or other inexpensive, personalized gifts each year. There are always those people who don’t care to receive handmade gifts, though – sometimes I do framed black and white photographs, small themed gift baskets (like Italian dinner, with pasta, sauce, a bottle of wine, bread, etc.) and such. I start thinking about what I’m going to get people long ahead of time and keep a list of ideas as I think of them.

Oh, you’re not fat! My mom has smaller versions of those exact same statues, but they’re porcelain and are knicknacks, I guess. She had them either facing each other (kissing) or with their backs to each other (pouting).
I’d love to get to the point where we can forego the gifts altogether and just enjoy each other’s company. Would getting rid of the gift exchange really ruin the family party? It’d be better if we adopted a less-fortunate family instead (poor, children of inmates, etc) than of giving each other more useless accoutrements.
When we were in grade school, my mom would make contributions to children’s charities on behalf of our teachers, and I think most of them got a kick out of it.

This year my wife and I are employing two money saving strategies at Christmastime. We just got married this May, and we have many relatives who either did not take pictures or did not order pictures from the photographer or were not able to come to the wedding at all. While it is slightly presumptious to give a gift of a picture of oneself, we thought that a nice gift for our families (especially the grandparents and great aunts and uncles) would be wedding collages or wedding pictures. We can print the pictures for free using various drug stores and all we would need to pay for would be the frames.

The second way we are saving money is through Mary Kay. My wife is a Mary Kay consultant- a financial pro/con discussion in and of itself. Mary Kay has many products similar to what you could find at Bath and Body Works or other similar stores. By giving gifts of Mary Kay we are actually investing in the business as we are spending the cost of the item (50% of retail) and we are also exposing the recipient to the various products that MK offers and hopefully we are gaining a customer for the future!

I am done with my shopping! I bought *very nice* gifts for 56 people for just $254.20!!! I shoppped on-line all year long using coupons and codes. My favorite resources for these coupon codes are FishingForDeals.com and SlickDeals.net. The important thing is that you keep a master list of who you need to buy for (birthdays, Christmas, etc.) – and check them off once you’ve made a purchase – never, never buy anything you don’t need just because it’s a great price!

I want to add that I budget $600 per year for gifts (Christmas, birthday’s, wedding, new baby, office & school parties, retirement, moving, etc.) – that’s $50 per month put into an ING savings account. For 3 years now I’ve managed to be at a point where I can start the year with $600 (I lump summed it the 1st January)- and when it’s gone then no more shopping. I’ve always had $ left over. I can’t tell you how good it feels to not be broke in December or have debt in January. The lessening of stress is well worth finding or saving the $ to open a gift buying account. Thanks everyone for sharing the gift buying tips, there are some really good ideas here!

After years of being slightly peevish that gifts I spent good money on gathered dust in my mother’s closets, this year I am making charitable donations for most of my family members. While $100 split between ten people is only $10 each and not enough to buy much, a $100 donation can do a lot of good with many organizations. Each person will be receiving a letter on nice stationary with information about the gift and how it will be used by the place I’m giving to. And the best part is that it will do real good in the world, rather than inspiring family members to just smile and pretend they really needed another candle/book/tie/etc.

I believe it’s also important to know who needs to get gifts and who doesn’t. I don’t give gifts to distant family members, workplace acquaintances, people I used to be friends with but don’t really talk to anymore, my mailman (since I don’t really even know who it is), and so on. If you’re flush, by all means, give gifts to everybody. If not, do your best by the people you really care about, and stick to Christmas cards for the rest.

My wife and I have, for quite a few years now, been able to surprise our friends and relatives with great gifts (considering our somewhat meager means as two students). We’ve got a couple of great tricks to save a lot of money during the Christmas season, while still coming out looking like Santa Claus. Here are the main tips:

1. Prepare year-round. Unfortunately, it’s too late for that this year, but it’s vital enough that I’m putting it here anyhow (there’s always 2007). End-of-season clearance sales on clothing are a great source of savings, for example. No one wants to buy a sweater as summer is around the corner – but Uncle Mike will love it come Christmas. Same goes for when you see a great deal online for something you just don’t need. Ask yourself if there’s someone you’ll need to gift who would love it. This brings us to my second point:

2. Buy based on perceived value. I try to, at a minimum, buy everyone in my family at least three good gifts. My price point is under 15 dollars for the first two and under 40 for the third. That’s no more than 75 dollars per person. However, I try and maximize the perceived value. I want the 15-dollar-or-less items to be viewed as being worth somewhere between 35 and 70 dollars, and the 40 dollar item as at least 90-115. That means that the total perceived value of your gifts lands somewhere around 160 to 255 dollars: about 2 to 3 times the actual amount you spent! Because of this, you can instantly limit yourself from most of the gifts you would consider for people – since most gifts fall outside of these requirements for perceived value. Don’t ever buy gift cards. Their perceived value is at best the exact dollar amount you spend on the card – and if your giftee doesnâ€™t like the store the value will be lower than what you spend. The best items to give greater perceived value are brand-name clothing and clearance sales on electronics – people always think they’re worth more than what you spent. But I should really devote a whole point to these types of specifics:

3. Buy smart. Black Friday isn’t even where the bulk of the deals are. True, there’s some crazy offers there – but they’re called door-busters for a reason. Retail outlets don’t make money on them, they make money off of the foot traffic drawn into their store not just on that day, but by the same people revisiting repeatedly through the holiday shopping season because of that initial Black Friday excursion. This tells you one thing: Don’t Buy From Retail Stores! You’re paying to employee those slackers who you just try and avoid. You’re paying their overhead on the building. Their utilities. Their janitors. Their everything that you didn’t realize you were buying when you bought that widget. So, the contra-positive is to buy online – and not from BestBuy.com or places like that (they charge about the same since they have a solid retail store footprint and don’t want to cannibalize their own business). Same goes for anybody with a large presence outside of cyberspace. Always search for an item online by ISBN or model number when available, and always use something like Froogle – with prices listed lowest to highest, of course. And though I shouldn’t have to say so: always take the one at the lowest price, even if it’s no quite what you’re looking for. There’s a reason economists consider near-substitutes in economic theory: most people will just as gladly take them.

4. Be creative. Here’s one of my craftier tricks as an example. One of the Goodwill thrift stores in my city gets donations from the shopping mall they’re right next to. As in, high-quality, expensive stuff that was selling for 50-100 dollars a pop is marked down to 5 dollars each, still new. The tags are still on the item, just marked out with a sharpie. So what do I do? I buy the item, keep the tags on it, and buy gift boxes from the store the item was donated from. For about 7 dollars you can give items with a perceived value between 30 and 60 dollars. Or you can buy rip-off versions of merchandise online. Generally, if it’s from Hong Kong and cheap but name brand, it’s a knock-off. I’ll buy them online and then take them around to the stores they supposedly came from, asking if they’re genuine. If a Coach or Tiffany’s employee can’t tell that the necklace you’re showing them isn’t made by them, do you really think your friend will? Probably not. You can buy a Tiffany’s necklace for 30 dollars, with the attached certificates, box and pouch – and retail you’re spending well over 100 for the same item.

5. Don’t charge your gifts. If it isn’t in your account to pay for it, don’t buy it. You’re lowering your perceived value ratio because now interest is increasing the cost of the goods you are purchasing. Not to mention that you won’t budget yourself as strictly and are more likely to slack on your cost requirements. In fact, try not to charge anything at all during December, unless you are the type that actually pays it at the end of the month and uses your card for their rewards. Long-term savings begins with short-term habits. If you’re having trouble paying for everyone’s gifts, take some of the pointers I’ve offered. Those changes alone should make the season much more affordable. Good luck!

#1 Don’t give conventional gifts. I have foudn my most successful gifts have been the weirdest (Like the preserved piranha fish I gave my brother 40 years ago & he still displays!) I have gotten many of my weird gifts at thrift shops and other odd outlets – and they were bargains! #2 Start shopping for Xmas in the late summer/early fall. That will give you time to find bargains and defrays your expenses over several months. And then you can avoid the holiday shopping craziness, too. #3 You can always get good deals on BOOKS – used or new at bargain tables in Barnes & Noble, etc. A book or 2 makes a nice substantial present. #4 Give collections of little presents in a gift bag. You can theme them to the taste of the person you are gifting and a few little things will be bound to hit a mark somewhere!

My SO’s parents asked for a “nice” picture of us. I’m going to take our 2 horses near some pine trees and we’ll be dressed nice and they’ll get a picture of us with the horses, which they love! A neighbor is giving us old barnboards which will be cut to a picture frame. I already have 8″x10″ piece of glass from another frame that broke. Cheap…or frugal??? Hmmm…. ENJOY YOUR CHRISTMAS THIS YEAR :)

I have kind of been doing a similar thing this year for my children. We decided to more to a 3 present limit for each child a couple years ago. That helped a LOT! Because we only get each child 3 items, we work hard to make them all things they will LOVE. The way we see it, if it was good enough for Jesus, it is good enough for my children!

So far, I have utilized ebay, craigslist, freecycle and stores for a couple things I either couldn’t find anywhere else or got a screaming deal on. I have now spent $149 after taxes and shipping for my sister and 6 children. I am almost done on that amount – just one more item for my sister (who lives with us, and is like another child in the house) and my 2 year old. Most of the items are new in the packaging, that people want to get rid of – all I have to do is pay them the pennies on the dollar that they are asking for the item (or I skip it if they want too much for it!), and then I have something great to give as a gift.

If I win the subscription here, it would be one of my husband’s 3 presents this year, and it is something he would LOVE!

We have his parents (who really do not want much as they are now long haul truckers and have no space!), his sister and BIL and our neice and nephew who we will also buy for. We try to keep it to under $20 for each person outside our immediate family – though this year, we haven’t spent that much on many of our children, so we will try to go less for others as well…I am still busy scouring deals online!

Last year I bought two cheap unfinished pine frames from Michael’s; I painted them, and with old Scrabble tiles glued on:
‘Little sisters’ on one and the name of my sister’s dog on the other. The first one went to one sister who just had two beautiful daughters; the other to the childless sister who has a great dog. But gifts were very much enjoyed at cost less than $3 each

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I read a great article on J.D.’s blog, Get Rich Slowly tonight and I just have to share it. It’s called the The Amazing Frugal Christmas Savings Spectacular! and he has some really great tips and pointers on how to……

[…] Samuel’s tip: “Give your ‘favorite things’ as gifts. Find items you love and use everyday, then share these with others. By giving favorite things, the focus is on sharing things you like rather than how much you spent. For example, my ‘favorite thing’ gift this year is a Zyliss pizza cutter. It is an unbelievably useful kitchen gadget! We use it to cut up everything, not just pizza. It costs less than $10!” […]

Creditcard.org recently released the Top 100 List of personal finance blogs to read in 2007. I've re-ranked the list in order of popularity to make it easier for readers who do not have the time to browse through all one hundred blogs. Methodol…

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My name is J.D. Roth. I started Get Rich Slowly in 2006 to document my personal journey as I dug out of debt. Then I shared while I learned to save and invest. Twelve years later, I've managed to reach early retirement! I'm here to help you master your money — and your life. No scams. No gimmicks. Just smart money advice to help you get rich slowly. Read more.

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